Zero Barriers | Disability Inclusion & AI Accessibility Training
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An ImpactEra Initiative

Zero Barriers

Empowering people with disabilities through accessible AI education, and building digital accessibility awareness across organisations.

Accessibility improves when lived experience shapes how digital products are designed and built. Zero Barriers works on both sides of the same gap: teaching people with disabilities the AI skills reshaping work, and helping organisations understand why their products and workplaces still lock people out. Delivered worldwide, in person and online.

See our sessions
  • Accessibility built in from the start, with individual access requirements welcomed and accommodated wherever possible
  • Sessions delivered across regions, not tied to one market
  • Led by lived experience and professional expertise in disability inclusion, accessibility and AI productivity
  • Practical, experience-led sessions designed to move beyond awareness into action

Zero Barriers is ImpactEra's vision to empower people with disabilities through accessible AI education, enabling them to create, participate and lead in the future of work, and to build digital accessibility awareness across organisations.

What Zero Barriers is

Two gaps, closed at the same time

Access to AI skills is determined by how training is designed. When a learning platform is not compatible with a screen reader, when video is published without captions, or when an exercise can only be completed with a mouse, the result is the same: capable people are unable to take part.

These are design decisions rather than individual limitations. Often, the gap is not intention but exposure: teams may never have seen how their decisions affect disabled users in practice. That principle is what Zero Barriers is built on.

Organisations, meanwhile, design products, hiring processes and workplaces without direct contact with the people those decisions affect.

We work on both at once. Skills on one side, awareness and accountability on the other. Neither one moves far without the other.

Zero Barriers is led by lived experience of blindness, and works with people and partners across different disability experiences. Where an engagement calls for expertise beyond that direct lived experience, we bring in people who hold it, rather than speaking on their behalf.

We don't treat people with disabilities only as recipients of inclusion. We involve lived experience in the design, delivery and evaluation of the work wherever possible.

Empowering people with disabilities

AI education that treats people with disabilities as future practitioners and leaders, delivered in formats that work from the first click.

Building organisational awareness

Disability inclusion, strategy and accessibility awareness that turn good intentions into changes people can actually feel.

Four ways we remove barriers

Each runs as a standalone engagement, or combines into a longer inclusion programme. All are available in person and online, anywhere in the world.

AI training for people with disabilities

Practical training in using AI for productivity, communication, analysis, automation and problem-solving, taught in accessible formats alongside the screen readers, magnifiers and voice tools people already use, so AI becomes part of one working flow rather than another tool that fights the setup.

Who it's for
People with disabilities building their AI skills, alongside the assistive technology they already use.
What happens
Hands-on training in practical AI tools, delivered in accessible formats from the first click.
What they leave with
Working AI skills for productivity, communication, analysis, automation and problem-solving.

Disability awareness and inclusion

Sessions for teams that replace assumption with experience. Staff meet the barriers directly, hear from people who live with them, and leave knowing what to do differently on Monday.

Who it's for
Teams and staff across an organisation.
What happens
Sessions that replace assumption with direct experience of the barriers people face.
What they leave with
A clear sense of what to do differently, starting Monday.

Disability inclusion strategy

We work with organisations to identify practical priorities across recruitment, retention, workplace adjustments, accessibility and procurement, and to define measures that can track progress.

Who it's for
Organisations ready to move past good intentions.
What happens
We help identify practical priorities across recruitment, retention, workplace adjustments, accessibility and procurement.
What they leave with
A strategy with measures that show whether it's working.

Digital accessibility awareness

For designers, developers, content teams and product owners. What accessibility actually means in the work they already do, how screen reader users meet their products in real situations, and the growing role of AI in closing those gaps.

Who it's for
Designers, developers, content teams and product owners.
What happens
Practical grounding in what accessibility means in the work they already do.
What they leave with
An understanding of how screen reader users meet their products, and where AI can help close the gaps.

What we measure

Depending on the engagement, Zero Barriers can measure:

  • Participant completion and capability gained
  • Practical tasks completed
  • Accessibility issues identified
  • Actions committed by organisational teams
  • Participant feedback and follow-up implementation priorities

Not sure where to start? Most organisations begin with an awareness session, then decide what comes next once they can see the gap for themselves. and we will suggest a starting point.

Zero Barriers training and awareness sessions

Programmes and sessions we have run for graduates, employers and employability programmes.

Four scenes from the Zero Barriers training in Sri Lanka: a facilitator speaking into a microphone at the front of a hall, and blind and low vision graduates working at laptops with headphones and earphones.
Skills training

From consuming technology to creating it, in Colombo

25 graduates who are blind or have low vision walked out of a training room in Colombo planning to build their own AI applications.

A hands-on intensive delivered with the Sri Lanka Council of Vision Impaired Graduates, led by Tuan Rushdi. By the end of the session, graduates could:

  • Automate daily workflows using accessible AI tools
  • Unlock advanced productivity with AI assistants
  • Customise prompts to address their own accessibility barriers
  • Develop concepts for accessible AI applications

People with disabilities should be among the creators reshaping the modern workplace, not the last group invited to learn the tools.

25 graduates Colombo, Sri Lanka Hosted by SLCVG
Panel appearance

"Access in Real Life" panel at Agoda

Tuan Rushdi joined Agoda's "Access in Real Life" session as a panellist, speaking to their product and engineering teams on:

  • How screen reader users navigate digital products in real-world situations
  • Practical steps product teams can take to create more inclusive experiences
  • The growing role of AI in addressing digital accessibility barriers

Sessions like this are the point of Zero Barriers: organisations learning directly from people with lived experience, rather than from a checklist.

Participants and facilitators of the BEmpowered employability training programme standing together for a group photograph beside the programme banner.
Skills training

AI training in the BEmpowered programme

AI training for participants with a wide range of disabilities, delivered as part of the BEmpowered programme to enhance employability. Delivery was adapted around participants' access requirements so that people with different disabilities could participate meaningfully throughout the programme.

Zero Barriers is growing, and we are looking for partners

If your organisation, workplace or community group would like to collaborate with us, we would like to hear from you.

Employers and enterprises

Bring awareness, sensitisation and inclusion strategy into your organisation, and open your hiring to talent you are currently missing.

Disability organisations

You know your communities. We bring an accessible AI education pathway to offer them, delivered in formats that work.

Universities and training providers

Embed accessible AI education into your programmes, and make sure the delivery itself does not exclude the students it is meant to reach.

Technology companies

Give your product and engineering teams direct access to lived experience, so accessibility shapes decisions before launch rather than after a complaint.

Funders and sponsors

Fund accessible training opportunities for people with disabilities, with outcomes that can be measured rather than simply described.

Governments and community groups

Deliver on inclusion commitments with programmes that produce measurable capability and services people can actually use.

Tuan Rushdi, Global Disability Inclusion and AI Productivity Specialist at ImpactEra, wearing a navy suit and patterned blue tie.

Leading Zero Barriers

Tuan Rushdi

Global Disability Inclusion and AI Productivity Specialist

Tuan leads the Zero Barriers initiative at ImpactEra. He works at the point where disability inclusion meets AI productivity, teaching people with disabilities to work with AI and helping organisations see the barriers their products and processes create.

He is blind and uses a screen reader in his own professional work every day. Accessibility therefore is not an abstract standard within Zero Barriers; it directly shapes how its training, content and digital experiences are designed and delivered.

He speaks and delivers sessions internationally, for product teams, employers, universities and disability organisations.

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